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[x] Use Luyu's friend to try to find some more trustworthy contacts locally who you can reveal the mission and your resources to.

"I think we need to get the lie of the land before we start backing one faction with the resources of a deep ship." Minetta says. You're surprised she's the one out, rather than Aletta or Juketta. "It could become quite awkward."

The buildings you pass stand in a succession of styles. High-exile grandiosity, Interfacate organicism, contemporary crystal spires, all styles you recognise from dim unmemory but shrouded in blast draping and misted behind defence auras that make them a funeral procession of Garden history, already halfway to the next world. There's not much traffic on these upper streets except military. The city's civilians go around below.

"They're always messy whenever you do something like this." Luyu says. "It doesn't matter if it's a hierarchy or a committee or a demarchy running the war, there's always egos and infighting."

"So where are we meeting this Nyxian friend of yours?" Mirareki asks.

"Underground." Luyu walks over towards a nearby kiosk. "We'll need masks first. There's a concern about contamination." You notice that, further into the city pretty much everyone is wearing a mask. You grab several from the kiosk, a simple replicator station that constantly extrudes new ones in small packets and pull it on.

"Are we going to need to be decontaminated?" You glance back at your mane of hair. Laser decontamination is not going to do much for it, neither is chemical.

"Don't worry." Mirareki says. "Luyu and I checked this before we got in here. They've got a posthuman system that White Stone Black's backup gave them. It's hair safe."

"I'm going to get a hair cover before we go into the field," you decide. The mask at least is comfortable. The filter is designed only to admit molecules of the local air and nothing else. You remember, somehow, seeing a comic in which a posthuman deployed nanotech weapons that disguised themselves as local atmosphere. You and the people you were watching it with, who you can't quite place, laughed their asses off. Such things are science fiction, even for posthumans.

You head towards the subway. "How'd the city end up so underground?" asks Atet, looking around.

"It was already underground before the war. It gets cold and snowy here in the winter," says Juketta. "Most people want to be able to access city services without going out. Now people are using it more as a bomb shelter."

You walk down into the subway. The walls are painted with intricate murals of tall knights with angel wings battling mechanical dragons - you find them slightly tacky - and you can hear the distant hum of underground maglevs. There's a decontamination station at the door, a misty, contained force field full of droplets of what smells like olive oil. The fuel for the nanotech to run on. You head down the steps into the underground area itself, a surprisingly grand high-ceilinged vault. Dispensaries, small shrines and art galleries line the sides, doors lead off into what are obviously more residential spaces, or perhaps lead up into the surface level apartment buildings. You don't know what politics govern who can get a space where. There's a lot more civilians down here, but still a lot of soldiers, an increasing number of them local in their green and blue uniforms. Mobilisation seems to have been massive.

You head through the underground arcade, then take a rattling monorail to another station. This area seems a bit more dilapidated, still kept clean by automations but with the obvious regimentation of care produced by a lack of humans to point them at spots they missed.

"It's just up here." Luyu says, and pushes open a side door into a noisy, wood panelled bar full of troops. Waitresses - mostly combat bodies, you wonder if it's volunteers or a rota - in short shorts and skimpy halter tops dodge between scrambled chairs, bringing food, wine and spirits to packed tables. The space obviously used to be a storage cellar, but it's been heavily remodelled. A bar made out of a single great tree runs along one side.

"Hey Luyu!"

The woman is sitting at a table with several others, all wearing night black tactical sleeves that make their bodies look carved from the void. She's slim, tall and long legged, with extremely pale skin relieved only by short dark hair and the Nyxian symbols tattooed on her cheeks. She rises as you approach, and smiles, showing teeth that look way sharper and pointier than they should. "You got a lot of nerve coming in here, babe. Did you think we wouldn't notice a Deep Ship?"

Her hand is on her gun, flipping back the strap on her holster. The bar goes suddenly quiet, as everyone notices the Nyxians clearing for action.

The Luyu facing grins at her like a shark. The others, you notice, have spread out into a combat formation that will let her aim at both the Nyxians and if necessary everyone else in the bar. You follow suit. Who knows who is friend and foe here.

"Two things," says Luyu. "First of all, I know for a fact that your shard of the cult was not who owned the Deep Ship. And second, even if you were sore about it, then you should all have thought about that before you kidnapped me and my friends huh?"

The Nyxian stares her down for a moment, then shrugs and snaps her holster closed. "Damn, you look good. New body?" She pulls Luyu into a hug. "I can't believe you're wearing this decadent thing to this icy hell of ours. Most of the militias are wearing old Shield Maidens or Furies, replaceable you know?"

"I roll how I roll. This is peak performance. Not like that beanpole you wear."

"Hahaha. Peak target more like. So who are your friends?" She looks over and waves you to seats. Luyu introduces you around. "What a weird crew." The Nyxian says. "I'm Banara."

"She and I have fought together a bunch of times. And on the opposite side too. She's almost as good as me." Luyu says.

"Almost! Bitch! I've killed you like twenty times!"

"Yeah, but there's a lot more of me than you isn't there?"

You let the banter go on for a few moments while drinks arrive, and food. You've been eating more for several days, building up a store of energy in case you can't eat while on campaign. The food, a baguette coated in fried egg and filled with spices and onion, smells too good to pass up anyway.

"So we're looking to get the lie of the land." Mirareki says after eating and small talk has been done.

"Not looking to just join up with the forces of the saviour goddess?" One of Banara's companions asks with a smirk. She's a big woman, muscular and voluptuous.

"Honestly, no." Mirareki says.

"Things are actually a bit chaotic here." Banara says. "When we arrived–"

"Two years ago," her talkative companion says. Banara hasn't introduced her but her AR overlay says her name is Catana, which has got to be a joke, or a Nyxian cult name. She's not even got cat ears.

"Yeah, two years ago." Banara says. "Two years ago, things were actually coordinated pretty well. They all went through the Scythian military's Central Coordination Committee. They'd assign each unit a sector and a general task, negotiate who worked with who and do the field logistics and stuff."

"Sounds great." Luyu says. "So what happened?"

"Lots of things." Banara shrugs. "A lot of jockeying between the Harawayans and the Lemnosi, who are both sending a ton of forces. Then that got caught up in deeper Rose/Chrysanthemum manoeuvrings from central Garden powers. I don't think it means all that much to them really but their local groups are allowing it to mean something to them. It was all pretty poised and then–"

"And then the Triple-C fucked it at Ariadne Pass." Catana says.

"So now unity of command has basically broken down and there's about a dozen allied groups who mostly coordinate with one another." Banara shrugs. "It's mostly split up by sector, and it doesn't work too bad because like, you can't do huge, coordinated set piece battles against Nephilim level firepower, but it's still a shit way to run a war."

"Fun though." Luyu says. "Don't be all anhedonic on me, Banana. I know you love running your own war."

Banara sighs, ignoring the bait. "Not if we lose it."

"So who's coordinating the independents?" Mirareki asks. "Off world forces presumably coordinate themselves, and the local army has its own command."

"The one to talk to is probably the Writer." Banara says. "She's a local, really old. She wrote a bunch of famous books. She coordinates a lot of the off world militia and the local irregular units. Not everything is coordinated through the militia there's–"

You feel it through the floor first, an explosion, around three hundred metres out. Dust drips down from the ceiling. Around the bar, everyone goes on alert, weapons coming out. "Was that a bunker buster?" asks Luyu.

"Don't think so." Banara says. "We'd have had an air raid warning. Maybe another terror raid." She says. "The Elioud don't just use big machines." A catapult flips up over her shoulder.

"What do we do?" Reizay asks.

"It's too tight in here. Let's get out into the arcade." Banara says. A lot of soldiers seem to be having the same idea. You spill out onto the concourse, careful to take cover. "Cat, roll the screen."

"You can use a drone screen against Nephilim?" Mirareki asks.

"Yeah, honestly, their infowar isn't such hot shit. It's not like fighting a postie." Banara says. Mirareki begins to spool out drones. The sound of explosions seems to be coming from the near distance. Several bloodied civilians run past, carrying wounded.

"What's happening?"

"Elioud hitting the 4th junction logistics node!"

"That's about three hundred meters out." Banara says. You look around. There are about three squads of troops here, armed, though not that well armed.

What should you do?
[ ] Join the counterattack.
[ ] Head for shelter and protect the civilians.
[ ] Make yourselves scarce and leave it to the professionals, and try to find the Writer.

[X] Join the counterattack

"You up for this, Luyu?" Banara smirks.

"I wouldn't miss it." Luyu hefts her plasma rifle.

The advertising and sign boards around you begin to flash out a series of alert messages, catching up to the alerts already going out via overlay.

"Plug into frequency 4.387 for tacnet and tasking." Banara looks at the other squads. "You guys up. Rank by points?"

"By points." The local squad agrees. The often quasi-ad hoc nature of Gardenian fighting units have led to a series of ranking systems, carried via social media to assign a leader among disparate units that are suddenly forced to work together. Her it looks like Luyu has the most points, and she shunts command to you. Several of her are now unslinging the hyperkinetic spider guns she so favours. A full six of them.

The other groups are the Nyxians, a squad of locals in green and blue, and a group of black and white clad Lemnosi, now hastily fitting their blank combat masks. The translation difficulty might be a problem. "Reizay, can you get us a Lemnosi translation bot on the tac-channel."

"On it." Reizay says, then raises her voice. "Everyone join Tactical Channel-32 okay?"

The voice server forms up rapidly, splitting into separate squads with leaders on an adhoc platoon network. The Waitresses are running out, bringing bags of ammo. Another rush of civilians comes through. In the distance you can hear the crackle of weapons fire. A medical remote package, moving at speed, zooms past from behind. Somewhere, just legible above the sound of the gunfire, someone is playing panpipes. It bothers you.

"Will you bless us, Priestess?" One of the locals calls to Banara.

"The Dark Lady's blessing is with every soldier." Banara says. "Every woman who picks up a gun does her work."

You make a sign of respect and acknowledgement even as you get on tacnet, checking the call signs on the list that pops up. The first response is run by an AI, call sign Radium. Your own callsign auto-generates. "Radium, this is Lithium-8-6."

8 is your number within the Lithium element. Six is the ancient identifier for a group leader, a piece of numerology that apparently dates back to before the exile.

"Lithium-8-6." Radium says a moment later. Telling you that you're okay to speak without conflicting with someone.

"We are three squads, weapons as pulsed. Ready for tasking?"

"Lithium-8-6. An Elioud element, assessed as squad strength with high confidence, has infiltrated one of our logistics nodes."

She brings up images. A bulkhead being breached by shapes it takes you a moment to parse, not for reasons of any eldritch geometry but just because they're so bizarre. Stocky inverted pyramids on tottering legs, almost unbalancing with each step. Illegible as military designs.

"Are those the enemy?"

"Elioud are made by nephilim to do things the nephilim can't command themselves to do. We think they have to make cognitive compromises to pull the trick off. But don't get complacent. They're made with posthuman technology and are extremely dangerous."

There's a loud boom in the near distance, followed by a bright flash and a breeze. Something big just went off, maybe a quench. Radium continues, unperturbed: "Intelligence assesses with medium confidence that they are attempting to take control of the node's computer system in order to subvert the combat bots within for further action against us. The mission is to retake the node before they can affect this plan. Your element will move through the maintenance tunnel at Frame 123, and gain entrance to the node while first response elements distract the main enemy force. Your mission is to eliminate the enemy hacker."

"Oh great. Extraordinary Force." Luyu laughs. "They must think we're really weak."

"Copy on all Radium. Lithium-8-6 is commencing mission."

You pull open your map and check the disposition. Frame 123 is about fifty metres away. You have the codes so it should be an easy entry point. On the other hand, you'll bet the Eloud, corrupted post human creations that they are, have the exit covered.

Which squad should lead the assault?
[ ] Have Luyu lead, probably the most effective but could end up with her losing a valuable combat body.
[ ] Have the Lemnosi lead: immune to fear and pain and you've seen what competent fighters a lot of them are
[ ] Have the locals lead: you're not sure how fierce the locals are, given how logistics work, their squad is certainly the most expendable.